Pomel­lato Opens New Paris Flag­ship

The Rue Saint-Honoré lo­ca­tion in the French cap­i­tal fol­lows new bou­tiques in other high-end spots.

PARIS — Pomel­lato has set­tled for the hottest stretch of real es­tate in Paris with a new flag­ship at 350 Rue Saint-Honoré.

“We are ex­tremely con­scious that this por­tion of Rue Saint-Honoré is re­ally chang­ing….We are in an amaz­ing neigh­bor­hood with great brands around,” said Sabina Belli, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Ker­ing- owned jew­elry la­bel, which is known for col­ored stones and chunky, gold links.

The street has seen a surge in ac­tiv­ity re­cently, with lux­ury stores in­clud­ing the Louis Vuit­ton flag­ship on the nearby Place Vendôme draw­ing record num­bers of tourists and lo­cals. Chanel, Boucheron and Saint Lau­rent are other brands in the neigh­bor­hood putting fin­ish­ing touches on high bud­get stores that will be open­ing soon. With the rise of dig­i­tal com­merce, brands around the world are in­ten­si­fy­ing ef­forts to build ex­traor­di­nary spa­ces to show­case their wares and in­spire pur­chases.

The new Paris bou­tique, which Belli de­scribes as “nearly like an apart­ment,” caps a three-year re­fur­bish­ment pro­gram that will next be ex­tended to two-tier cities around the globe, the ex­ec­u­tive ex­plained, sit­ting on a high-backed mauve sofa on the sec­ond floor, in front of a cof­fee ta­ble with a cup of tea, fruit bro­chettes and a brass vase of white hy­drangeas.

“We had prob­a­bly the most ex­cit­ing months in the his­tory of Pomel­lato now, be­cause we opened L.A., Lon­don and Paris ba­si­cally in the same pe­riod — I am not sure that such a co­in­ci­dence will oc­cur again in a while,” she added, not­ing plans to travel to Cal­i­for­nia this week to cel­e­brate the Bev­erly Hills open­ing — the other two stores also oc­cupy choice real es­tate, on Rodeo Drive and New Bond Street in the Bri­tish cap­i­tal.

The stores share “a very com­mon thread in terms of the color scheme and the am­bi­ence and this idea we had of mak­ing the stores feel more like a salon, a home, than a store,” she said.

The color scheme of the Paris store in­cludes a Vene­tian rose mar­ble, lac­quered walls in the muted Mon­te­napoleone red of the Mi­lan unit, and sheets of pat­terns cut from brushed brass.

It stretches along four win­dows on the street and Belli said she ob­served passersby stop­ping at each dis­play. Down­stairs is meant for more ca­sual brows­ing while the sec­ond floor is meant to be more pri­vate and in­ti­mate, she ex­plained.

“We are re­ally plan­ning to use the space for meet­ing our clients, to see some nov­el­ties or spend time and have tea and feel at home,” she said. Founded in Mi­lan in 1967, the la­bel counts a large pro­por­tion of women buy­ing for them­selves, ac­cord­ing to the ex­ec­u­tive.

“There’s a lot of self pur­chase at Pomel­lato, so we have very faith­ful clients that are work­ing women who have very high-level jobs and they want to re­ward them­selves and buy some­thing that has a sym­bol or maybe has marked a spe­cific time of their life or ca­reer,” she said.

“It gives us op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­ter­act with our clients al­most like with friends; they tell us their story, they ex­plain how and when they’ve de­cided to buy this piece and why, and their choices — so it’s a very in­ti­mate con­ver­sa­tion,” she added.

The la­bel has around 45 stores, in­clud­ing shops-in-shop in de­part­ment stores, in­clud­ing in sev­eral in the U.S. Given the im­por­tance of the mar­ket, the jew­eler may open more stores there.

“We have Chicago, New York, Mi­ami,

L.A. — there is ob­vi­ously room for a cou­ple of more,” said Belli, also cit­ing more Asian stores as a pos­si­bil­ity for ex­pan­sion.